July 2007

VICAR: The Revd. Martin Fredriksen Tel: 694109

PARISH OFFICE (Mondays to Fridays 9.30am – Noon) Tel: 697641

FROM THE VICAR: We hear so much nowadays about 'going green' and 'carbon footprints' - although I am not quite sure exactly what is meant by the latter! But the Church has been 'going green' for centuries - from the Monday after Trinity Sunday until the beginning of Advent, the liturgical colour is green, unless something special falls on a particular Sunday, like our Patronal Festival.

The liturgical colour in church, matches that of the world of nature outside - the time of everything growing, both cultivated and wild plants, as well as the trees and grass.

The different colours of the church's altar hangings and vestments over the course of the year, as well as providing a change or contrast, hark back to those days (which were not so very long ago) when the majority of the population was unable to read or write. The colours, as well as the pictures in stained glass windows and the like, provided essential visual aids.

It may well have been that apart from the gentry in a community, the Vicar was the only one who could read or write - hence the expression 'clerk-in-holy-orders' for the man who was both literate and ordained.

I still use this expression under 'occupation', when countersigning passport applications and other legal documents for parishioners – it just looks good, and no-one has ever queried it!

For some clergy, I gather, the long Trinity season is a problem when it comes to thinking of new sermons upon the sequence of Sunday Bible readings. Personally, I find the 'green-ness' and sheer beauty of this area in which we are privileged to live, a great inspiration.

As a Parish, we are greatly blessed as 'morning by morning, new mercies I see.' - as the line in an old hymn expresses it. We have all the ups and downs, the joys and sorrows, the boring and the exciting, but 'going green' in all senses of that phrase, is not such a bad thing after all.

Martin Fredriksen

Archived Leader Articles :

2012 - January

2011 - January, February, April, May, June, July, August, September, November, December

2010 - January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December

2009 - January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December

2008 - January, February, March, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December

2007 - January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December